Search Results for 'ten'

“Excuse me, are you listening to me?” Lady Em Dash had been telling her old friend, Sir Hyphen, about her latest adventurous escapade at the Mondaytorium, and was rather perturbed to see the Sir Hyphen was not listening with the attention she would have expected.

“Oh, I do apologise, Em—I am a little distracted. I received an interesting communication the other day—an email— and . . . well, I really can’t make any sense of it at all. It is rather on my mind, I’m afraid.”

“Really? Would you like to tell me about it?”

“I am starting to wonder if it is some sort of code.”

“Sounds fascinating!”

Sir Hyphen grinned apologetically. “I know it sounds strange, and I am really not sure it is the mystery I am making it out to be. It is just that . . . well it is from my old friend Lord Lemon . . . I have not heard from him for years, and, out of the blue, I received this rather strange email. He is usually so wise, so erudite, so profound even, that it disturbed me rather.”

Lady Dash nodded. “Emails are so old fashioned, aren’t they. What did it say to perplex you so, my friend?”

Sir Hyphen, not being one to speak in haste, considered the question for a long moment while Lady Dash, who did most things in rather a rush, tried her best to be patient.

“That’s the problem really—it is more just that it felt a bit . . . and it makes reference to Sir Ed in several places, which is, of course, disturbing in itself. You do remember Sir Ed don’t you . . . Sir Ed Steam?

Lady Dash blushed and rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I thought you would. Anyway, the rest of it is . . . most of it really . . . is just . . . gobblydeegook, for want of a better word. Which is why I began to wonder if it might be some sort of code. Here, let me read you some of it:

Deep within the Furcano, the Mother of the Blubbits was growling. Her belly actually. She’d spent days and days, like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny, a reproduction of the future, much less messy and incommodious to just write new characters into a story than giving birth . . . “

The ten dogs circled the round kitchen table, all the eyes were focused on the left over roast potatoes including Mari Fe’s. Suddenly there was a little bang just in front her and she froze and glanced up. A mouse had appeared on top of the microwave, and he froze too, and stared at Mari Fe. Time stood still for a long moment as they looked at each other. Mari Fe wondered if he would like a Marie biscuit, remembering the last time he was here, and how he would only nothing else.
It wasn’t until later that she began to wonder if anything had gone wrong with the teleport arrangements with Baltazar. It was a remarkable coincidence, the time travel mouse popping in like that unexpectedly, after such a long absence.

Mari Fe looked out of the window for the 57th time that morning. They should have been here by now, where the devil are they? It wasn’t like Bee to be late. I’ll give it another hour and then I’ll have to call Skye and see if she knows what’s happened. But Mari Fe was reluctant to speak to Skye in case Skye asked her to elaborate on the three kings parade plan for Ed Steam. The fact of the matter was that Mari Fe had completely forgotten what the plan was.

Belle Endwhistle received the telepathic call from Skye while she was floating on the cool aqua pool in The City. Belle, affectionately known as Bee, was one of the surge teams helpers from the “other side”. She had always had a particular fondness for cars, hats and vintage designer dresses; before the surge team was initiated, she had often turned up in dreams, driving a flying red car and wearing a variety of outlandish hats. Bee been delighted to accept the offer to chauffeur the fleet of red cars, and always enjoyed meeting old friends on the physical side.

Aqua Luna was was mopping the floor of the Surge Team’s HQ. She was not strictly speaking a member of the Team, and the only sponge insigna she had was her mop and the few sponges she used to clean the keyboards and the screens of “the deck” as they called their room full of computers and screens and blinking red and blue lights.

She’s been here for ages, since Lord Ed Steam had founded the organisation actually. People didn’t usually pay attention to her and she could go everywhere. Almost. There was a room where she couldn’t go and she didn’t know what was in there. Only the higher ranked members could penetrate this secret room. She tried several times to cast a glance just before they closed the door, but there always was some bloody smoke coming out of the room.

Her mama had told her many times, ‘Aqua Luna, there is no smoke without fire’. There must be a huge fire inside that room for it’s always smokey.

The door opened again, but she was too far and she only could see the fumes again. ‘Could that be a dragon ?’, she thought. But what use could the surge team have of a dragon. Aqua Luna knew for sure that dragons were real. Her Mama had told her so when she was a kid, and she trusted her Mama, even when she was shouting at her. ‘It’s for your own good Aqua Luna”.

This time it was that young woman, Cornella who went out. She seemed concerned and she was talking in her unicomp.

It was important to cure the cold quickly, because the lady from North Carolina had work to do. Ed Steam was getting too big for his boots, and his policies threatened to disrupt the vital surge work. Pearl Rider wiped her nose and shoved the tissue back in her pocket and sent urgent telepathic messages to her associates. Another surge tide had landed, a white tide of snow, which was expected to herald a surge southwards of the other dimensional aurora colours. The population had been on edge for some time, seeing doom and malevolent forces of outside control in just about anything and everything, so a sudden strong surge of the aurora was expected to create even further alarm.

Tina was working in a very unknown departement at the online payment company. Part of her job was to make sure the information provided by the customers were genuine and she only had to validate the payments in a mouse click.

That day however, she was feeling a bit mischievous and when she realized her mouse wasn’t functionning correctly, instead of asking for a new mouse, she continued with it a bit. At first it had been random transactions and she found it quite boring. But when one person was persistant enough to go again through the pain-in-the-ash process of paying online, she felt a tingly feeling in her chest. She clicked with her dysfunctionning mouse and invalidated the transaction again.

Several minutes later, she realized it was the same person again. Apparently a French guy. God, she hated France ! They eat frogs, frogod sake!
He was using another website to make his transaction. Obviously not knowing that all the payments were coming through the scrutiny of that secret service departement. She exulted and clicked again. She was so excited that her colleagues looked at her suspiciously when she made that hysterical laugh of hers.

Click! Click! Click!

She had even been hesitating to have a break lest he would present his transaction again and would pass through her vigilance.

“Tina ?”

Her boss! A moment of inattention and it was over! She felt a surge of disappointment flooding her when she realize the transaction had been taken by another of her colleagues… and validated.

How would they call this new blue planet? “XAIO353-57+” had been suggested by the High Klashtram Mothtar, but it would probably take at least one gyros before the Science council would unanimously agree.

Bashashish 20-13 was actually the communication attendant who’d discovered that promising planet, thus effectively defeating promises of uninteresting and failure-ridden work at the Cosmological Administration for Variable Explorations, where she’d been sent after unimpressive academic studies. The C.A.V.E. was one of those administrative hideouts producing nil but tedium, full of crannies which had not seen a cleaning ladybug (nor any clean ladybug for that matter) probably since its creation.
BashTT (short for Bashashish Twenty-Thirteen), after many of her cocoons left there at the institute, and as much boredom, started to play with some of the old equipment she’d found in a broom closet (needless to say, all brooms had been eaten long ago), and had found some unusual waves coming from a corner of the Sector 114116.

It took her more gyri to gather more solid evidence, tinkering with the planet’s waves in order to test whether the blue marble had intelligent life. So far, it had been mostly conclusive. She’d managed to connect to broadcasting waves and also to the transportation systems. She tinkered with the stream of data in order to go local, and by replacing another’s booking with her personal information, managed to book a few craft tickets for herself. This would be perfect for when she’d visit around the planet’s locations when she would arrive with the official delegation.
She was particularly fond of the Land of the Hobbit breathtaking sceneries, and wished she could get an appointment in Rivendell with the wizard they called Grand’Alf who seemed able to talk their mothty language.

The world didn’t end that day.
But maybe it should have, or at least the endless list of senseless rules, silly obligations, half-compromises and clever-yet-too-often-outdone-by-stupidity ploys to defeat them.
Stuck in the middle of his twelfth failed attempt at booking a flight for the Land of the Long Cloud, he found himself dreaming of buying… well, no— buying was sorely overrated nowadays. With all the rules on how you could or could not spend your money, he’d found it impossibly difficult to buy his friend the new camera of his dreams.
So, let’s dream of building something instead: a dream submersible airborne trailer, or maybe just a flying house with giant wheels, to soar above the pettiness of this world, and to go unfettered wherever fancy called.
He knew why the shark tank in the department store had exploded last week, killing only the sharks and turtles. It probably wasn’t being boxed, as much as being forced to look everyday at the headless consumers that killed the creatures. Whatever the reason might have been, in all fairness, they’d managed to boldly go beyond the end of their world.

Notwithstanding the child who was asking questions to his nanny just behind them, the flight to Taipei has been rather quiet. It was a three hours flight, quite short compared to the twelve hours ones Yann had been doing lately between Paris and Shanghai. Fortunately, the seats of the Dragoneer company were big enough, which was another strange element of these Chinese planes. Instead, the French Airways’ ones had narrow seats with so little room for one’s legs. He slept for most of the trip. Awoken merely when the flight attendant brought the food. Some rice dish again.

As soon as they landed, they were welcomed by a troup of taichi dancers, resembling Tahitian dancers with their loincloth. It was hot. The weather of course, not the taichi dancers who seemed unaffected by the temperature. Their slow movements were relaxing and a bit hypnotic. It was a contrast with the rapid dance of Tahiti Yann remembered from their last trip.

A woman in a red coat and sunglasses was walking behind them, looking around suspiciously.

“Solar flares alert at noon, take shelter” the electronic sign was saying when she left the building. Rubber masks coated with lead-like substance were designed to alleviate the exposure to what authorities qualified as dangerous radiations, but she was wondering what good it had brought her, listening to those darned authorities. Of course now, there was a variety to contend with every possible taste: one could find designer masks on the market, even ones that made you look like Jeanne Roberts, the famed actress from the naugthies québecquoise telly series “Sept ETs à la maison” (inaptly translated as “Sethies at home”).
However, dissident reports had transpired that the flares were not the health hazard they talked about, and maybe could actually be good for you. Theories were that they helped trigger beneficial mutations of your body, that would then go through a slightly disturbing period of adaptation and heightened hypersensitivity, but that later… your potentials would start to get limitless, well, whatever that meant.
She wondered what good becoming a limitless housekeeper would bring her… more bloody work, that one was certain.

“Uh Oh Godfrey, now we’re in trouble, there’s a typhoon in the random daily quote! We really must improve the weather before all hell breaks loose!”

But Godfrey’s mind was on other matters and he wasn’t paying attention to Elizabeth.

“GODFREY!!” she shouted “This is serious! Pay attention, do!”

“I really must say, Liz,” Godfrey shuffled the papers he was reading into a neat pile, “That when it’s too elaborate, it’s too weirdo, and when it’s pure delirium, it’s increasingly rubbish.”

“You know, I think they got a name for your condition” Franlise said while throwing another piece of rotten furniture and a dusty half-plucked stuffed pheasant from the window.
“Oh no!” Elizabeth was crestfallen “not my favourite plucked pheasant, let’s at least keep this! A perfectly functioning piece that one, Lewis Someteenth, French expensive furniture dammit!”
“You’re a bloody compulsive hoarder, that’s what you are!” Franlise said authoritatively. “Now, move along, let me do my job.”
“Your job? And what are you now?”
“A professional organiser, of course.”

After his epic escape, Loard Koala had found refuge, unbeknownst to even the shrewd and some said foxy Ted Marshall, in the depths of the Great Green Wall of Afraka. There, under swarms of migrating magpies cackling like a horde of harridans lamenting about the miseries of their existences, he was planning his return… secretly hoping for a celestial pardon from the Elvens.
From the top of a towering eucalyptree, smoking a large makeshift cigarillo from its leaves, he could see Canaria and its bountiful promise of a new world, and sighed contentedly.

On the marina, Sue Flay, wrapped in hot pink towel sprinkled in horseradish and buns crumbs started to feel dizzy and possessed.
Her poodle had bitten her savagely, and her right breast was bleeding profusely.

“May I be of assistance?” an tonsured man with a genial face and white girded loins asked, handing her a raspy paper towel.

Without knowing why, Sue started to sob like a huge meringue.